International institutions can interdependence work keohane summary

Under what conditions should China be admitted to the World Trade Organization? These questions help illustrate the growing importance of international institutions for maintaining world order. But although international institutions are increasingly important, they are not always successful.

However, our knowledge is incomplete, and as the world moves toward new forms of global regulation and governance, the increasing power and scope of international institutions has raised new questions about how these institutions themselves are governed. Until the late s, American students of international relations equated international institutions with formal international organizations, especially the United Nations.

Yet most observers recognized long before that the UN did not play a central role in world politics. Analysts and policymakers in Europe, North America, and much of Asia concluded that international institutions were marginal to a game of world politics still driven by the traditional exercise of state power.

The exchange rate and oil crises of the early s helped bring perceptions in line with reality. Suddenly, both top policymakers and academic observers in the United States realized that global issues required systematic policy coordination and that such coordination required institutions.

How does cooperation occur among sovereign states and how do international institutions affect it? Indeed, why should international institutions exist at all in a world dominated by sovereign states? This question seemed unanswerable if institutions were seen as opposed to, or above, the state but not if they were viewed as devices to help states accomplish their objectives. The new school of thought argued that, rather than imposing themselves on states, international institutions should respond to the demand by states for cooperative ways to fulfill their own purposes.

By reducing uncertainty and the costs of making and enforcing agreements, international institutions help states achieve collective gains. This new institutionalism was not without its critics, who focused their attacks on three perceived shortcomings.

First, they claimed that international institutions were fundamentally insignificant since states wield the only real power in world politics. The second counterargument focused on "anarchy": the absence of a world government or effective international legal system to which victims of injustice can appeal.

The third objection to theories of cooperation was less radical but more enduring. Theorists of cooperation had recognized that cooperation is not harmonious: it emerges out of discord and takes place through tough bargaining.

Nevertheless, they claimed that the potential joint gains from such cooperation explained the dramatic increases in the number and scope of cooperative multilateral institutions.

Critics pointed out, however, that bargaining problems themselves could produce obstacles to achieving joint gains. The general problem of bargaining raises specific issues about how institutions affect international negotiations. The end of the Cold War also shattered a whole set of beliefs about world politics and made scholars increasingly aware of the importance of ideas, norms, and information. Leave a Reply Cancel reply Enter your comment here Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:.

Email required Address never made public. Name required. Follow Following. Sign me up. Already have a WordPress. Log in now. Loading Comments Email Required Name Required Website. New Institutionalism. Counter: Substance and degree of acceptance Policies and agreement produced by international institutions are substantively different from unilateral agreements produced by states Agreements produced are based on compromise to achieve international approval.

Hence, cooperation is made difficult as they will reject agreements that are mutually beneficial. Cooperation is not harmonious; a product of discord and bargaining Refuse binding terms Pace and extent of cooperation affected.